Student Gift Membership Recipient – Angela Bair

In January 2017, free two-year ALSC/ALA memberships were granted to 100 students. These memberships were made possible through funds from the Friends of ALSC. The objective of this pilot program is to encourage and support new professionals in their ALSC membership and engagement and to begin networking, taking advantage of professional development, and career support. Below is a post written by student gift recipient, Angela Bair, on her journey thus far with ALSC.

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Photo courtesy of Angela Bair

In 2016, Adjunct Faculty, Dr. Marianne Martens, notified School of Library Information Science graduate students on the KSUlistserv about the ALSC Student Membership Gift program. After a few weeks of applying I was accepted into the program and began exploring the many resources that ALSC has to offer for its student members.

ALSC professional resources help me with keeping up with training in the field of children’s librarianship since I don’t work in a library setting as a children’s librarian developing programming or storytimes. These skills are essential if I plan to continue to seek employment as a children’s librarian in a public library setting. Also, free access to the webinars keeps my skills relevant for my Substitute Reference Associate position at the Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library serving patrons of all ages in a reference setting.

One of my biggest concerns when I enrolled in the program in 2016 was finding a mentor. Unfortunately at that time, due to large capacity of new mentees, I wasn’t matched with a mentor. This would later inspire me to register to become a mentor and assist a mentee with their professional career goals. In fall 2017, I was officially matched with a mentee through ALSC and I am currently working with her on a research presentation for the 2018 Marantz Picturebook Research Symposium at Kent State University.

My student gift membership through ALSC has allowed me to access resources to strengthen libraries, allow professional development opportunities that have transformed my career, and connected me with a network of members who share their knowledge, build new programs and services, and advocate for library service. ALSC has not only helped me professionally but has also has inspired me to support library services to children by letting my voice be heard for young vulnerable populations.

Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC. If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.